Soft City

“GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY. . . ” So dawns a new day in Soft City, where pill-stuffed citizens sit in traffic, march off to work at Soft Inc., zone out in front of the TV news, and shop, shop, shop.

The only graphic novel by the legendary Norwegian pop artist Hariton Pushwagner— completed in 1975, lost for decades, and never before published in the United States—is a scathing masterpiece in the tradition of Brazil and A Brave New World but with an off-kilter beauty all its own. Pushwagner gives us an epic, exuberantly intricate vision of a single day in a world gone wrong: a brightly smiling, disturbingly familiar dystopia of towering skyscrapers, omnipresent surveillance, and endless, distant war. Every face looks like the next, and language itself has gone soft: “CLEAN BOMB THE HAPPY WAY,” blares the morning paper; “Heil Hilton!” barks an overlord on the news. Welcome to Soft City. Now don’t be late for work.

Hariton Pushwagner (Terje Brofos) was born in Oslo, Norway, in 1940 to an engineer father and biochemist mother. While recuperating from a bus accident at the age of four, he was taught to draw by his father. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts and the Statens Kunstakademi in Oslo. After graduating in 1966, he became a set painter for Norwegian state television. In 1968, he began collaborating with the Norwegian author Axel Jensen on a series of graphic novels and illustrations. In 1969, he started work on his own comics masterpiece, Soft City, which was completed in 1975 but then lost. In Oslo in 2002, it was rediscovered. Soft City was included in the 2008 Berlin Biennial, and Pushwagner’s work has been displayed in galleries all over the world, including New York, Sydney, Paris, and London.

Chris Ware is an American cartoonist. He is the author of, among other works, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Building Stories, and the ongoing series The ACME Novelty Library. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Harvey and the Eisner, and was the first cartoonist to be included in the Whitney Museum’s Biennial of American Art. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with his family.

Martin Herbert is associate editor of ArtReview and a regular contributor to Artforum, frieze, and Art Monthly. He lives in England and Berlin, Germany.